


shiver

by orphan_account



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, i. don’t know what else to tag, ish, pete’s in the bath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 23:08:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17692907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Pete doesn’t realize that he’s shivering until he looks down at his hand, distorted like he’s looking at it through a glass, and sees that it’s sending tiny tremors through the otherwise still water.





	shiver

**Author's Note:**

> im gonna orphan this one because i don’t know if i like it or not lmao but hope u enjoy!

Pete doesn’t realize that he’s shivering until he looks down at his hand, distorted like he’s looking at it through a glass, and sees that it’s sending tiny tremors through the otherwise still water. The bath had been scalding hot when Pete drew it four hours ago, but all of that heat seems to have disappeared somewhere into the foggy mirror panes or under the door. Pete starts shaking worse, now that he’s realized how cold he actually is. But he makes no move to get out. 

 

Instead, he just stretches his legs out a bit, idly wondering if he could actually get a toe stuck in the bathtub faucet. It would certainly be a funny way to go, wouldn’t it, if his toe got stuck and he just withered away in the still water until someone came in and found his body, wrinkled and bloated and cold to the touch, weeks later. 

 

Yeah, that’d be fucking hilarious. 

 

Pete pulls his foot back with a sigh and lets his head fall back just enough for his ears to be submerged in the water. It’s not silent, exactly, but the white noise sort of helps to drown out the slow molasses rush of his thoughts. Sort of. 

 

Time feels slowed, like each passing minute is really more of a century, and Pete feels like he’s aging in time with it. His fingertips are so wrinkled that he honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they just fell off.

 

That could be good. Then playing bass would hurt again, it would feel like something other than autopilot again. God, Pete is so fucking sick of autopilot, but he has no idea how to get into the cockpit.  

 

There’s a loud buzzing sound from across the room. Pete can hear it, even with his ears still underwater, so he sits up just enough to peer out of the bathtub and look at his phone, just for a second.

 

Patrick’s calling. 

 

Patrick’s calling for the third time today, and normally Pete would’ve answered by now, or at least sent something to tell Patrick he’s busy, but  today’s not normally, somehow. Today is cold and solitary, today is a missed prescription because the open bottle would’ve been an invitation, today is sitting in still water and trying to be thankful that he doesn’t have the motivation to reach for the razor up on the shower shelf. Pete shivers again, mostly on purpose, to drive away the thoughts that little silver sliver incites. 

 

Pete’s phone stops buzzing; the pseudo-silence returns. It’s starting to make Pete’s head hurt, but he doesn’t sit up or move or do anything. his whole body aches anyway, so what’s the point?

 

Pete’s overrun by another wave of shivering, closing his eyes and letting it wash over him like a bad parody of an orgasm. Space Balls would’ve been better as a porno, it seems. 

 

The water is starting to feel aggressively cold, instead of its previous passive nature. Pete thinks about the Titanic and wonders how much colder that water was. The part of his brain that’s still hung up on that orgasm simile thinks about Kate Winslet’s tits, smirks a little, but it only lasts for a second because that’s the part of his brain that mostly exists for the magazines and the stages. It has no place here. 

 

Pete closes his eyes and thinks about never opening them again. Eternal darkness isn’t really that scary when you remember you won’t be able to know it’s there. That’s more comforting than it should be to Pete - it’s just that he’s spent more than his share of life as a corpse already. 

 

His phone starts buzzing again. He doesn’t look to see who it is because he already knows. Patrick might show up soon, if he’s not busy, and he might break down the bathroom door and force Pete into warm clothes and tell him that he needs to, “stop doing this, Pete, you’re going to get hypothermia,” and that he should, “go back to that therapist you had last year, I think she really helped,” and that Patrick just wants him to, “get better, I can’t be worrying about you all of the time.”

 

But he’s probably busy. 

 

Pete sighs, long and slow and therefore reminiscent of the life he wishes he wanted to live. The air sends ripples out across the surface of the bath water. The smallest actions grow big (that’s cliche), the smallest actions will hit a wall eventually and then they’ll build up into a tsunami and come crashing down (maybe that’s just in Pete’s case).

 

The water’s cold. Pete’s phone is still ringing. his head still hurts in every possible way and his limbs feel like those silently falling trees in those empty forests and all he can do is shiver. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thx for reading!


End file.
